Move will pave the way for the Open Championship to be hosted solely at
mixed-membership clubs after last year’s outrage at Muirfield staging the
oldest major

Women are expected to be allowed to join the Royal and Ancient Golf Club in October after more than 250 years of the game’s most influential club admitting only male members.

The move will pave the way for the Open Championship to be hosted solely at mixed-membership clubs after last year’s outrage at Muirfield staging the oldest major.

Sources within the St Andrews-based club confirmed to the Telegraph that the chairman of the general committee has written to the 2,500-plus members asking them to accept the proposals which will be discussed in the forthcoming spring meeting and voted on in the autumn.

Wilson Sibbett has been canvassing opinion within the club for the seven months since the Open and it is highly unlikely that the chairman’s wishes will be over-ruled. “Now is the time to ask members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club to welcome female members into the club," the chairman writes. “It is of course for members to decide if they wish to alter the rules of the club to give effect to this change of policy.”

The Royal and Ancient used to be one of the game’s two governing bodies - together with the United States Golf Association - before the R&A was hived off into a commercial operation.

That was, in part, to counter the critisicm of the governing body excluding half of the world’s population from its own confines, but at best the split only confused matters. The Royal and Ancient following the lead of Augusta - the Georgia club which hosts the Masters - in admitting female members would obviously assist the executive of R&A, particularly in dealing with sponsors.

One of the biggest of these, HSBC, vocalised its opposition to the Open visiting male-only membership clubs. Royal Troon and Royal St George’s join Muirfield as the three clubs on the nine-strong Open roster which does not allow female members.

Giles Morgan, the HSBC’s head of sponsorship, made clear that the R&A’s continued stance on taking its major to male-only establishments could have repercussions.

“It's not something we are going to hold a gun to their heads about. But the R&A are clear that it's a very uneasy position for the bank," said Morgan. "We would like to see it solved so we don't keep talking about it. When you are showcasing one of the world's greatest tournaments it would be much more palatable if it were played where there was not a sense of segregation.”

Morgan made these comments in January knowing of the progressive steps being taken in the background. "I think things are moving," Morgan said. “They are doing a lot of research, asking a lot of sponsors and stakeholders over the last three or four months. They are acutely aware that things need to change and move on. What I do think they are doing right is spending some proper consultancy time looking at this rather than knee-jerking to a sort of populist decision."

Whether the R&A would be prepared to tell the male-only membership clubs that they can only stage the Open if they, too, admit females is another matter. Peter Dawson, the R&A’s chief executive, said last year: "To think that the R&A might say to a club like Muirfield, 'You are not going to have the Open any more unless you change your policy' is frankly a bullying position that we would never take. Muirfield has a huge history of the Open Championship and who are we to say what they should do because they are behaving perfectly legally?”

St George's and Troon may be open to change, but there is a widespread belief within the game that Muirfield, owned and run by the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, would rather sacrifice the Open than be told what to do as with regards its membership. However, the Royal and Ancient’s move will see the male-only membership policy at the Open’s clubs come under increasing scrutiny.